Art Fix Friday: November 2, 2018

Researcher Sarah Bochicchio points out that while female Impressionists Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot have had major solo shows in 2018, Bracquemond continues to remain relatively unknown. The article sheds needed light on this under-recognized member of the “three great ladies of Impressionism.”

Front-Page Femmes

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged her country to “improve the standing of women in the arts [by ensuring] balanced award-giving juries and grant bodies.”

Researchers at Indiana University Bloomington are creating a comprehensive online database of female artists active in the U.S. and Europe from the 15th to 19th centuries.

Though only three are women, the four-person curatorial team for the 2020 Berlin Biennale has stated, “we identify as female because we feel the rule of everything by overconfident-macho voices must end.”

Priscilla Frank of The Huffington Post discusses the sometimes troubling associations drawn between female creativity and the occult. In her investigation, she examines Amazon’s recent remake of the 1977 horror film Suspiria and Hilma af Klint’s current Guggenheim retrospective Paintings forthe Future.

Mickalene Thomas discusses the way photography became the “center of her practice” at a luncheon honoring the accomplishments of women in film and photography.

Nan Goldin and Catherine Opie are among several artists selling signed prints in a five-day sale organized by Magnum Photos. Proceeds from Goldin’s sales will go to her activist group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now).

BAMcinématek in Brooklyn is presenting a film series highlighting the “overlooked work of women in the domestic space.”

Betye Saar: Keepin’ It Clean goes on view at the New-York Historical Society today. The 92-year-old black feminist icon hopes the exhibition will convince America to “clean up its act” regarding politics and actions.

The Guardian profiles a new exhibition on view at England’s Nottingham Contemporary. Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance features 40 women and non-binary artists whose work examines the ways in which women combat oppression. In an effort to present a fresh perspective on the topic, the curators of the show have “ditched typical exhibiting systems and hierarchies to allow feminist and intersectional queer thought to direct everything from the ground up.”

Patricia Cronin, Aphrodite, and the Lure of Antiquity reimagines classical mythology through a distinctly feminist lens. Part of the Tampa Museum of Art’s Conversations with the Collection series, the show is based around artist Patricia Cronin’s encounters with museum’s holdings of ancient Aphrodite imagery. The result is an exhibition that “erases the bias of the original myth and replaces it with an icon absolutely appropriate for contemporary women.”

—Becca Gross is the fall 2018 publications and marketing/communications intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.